Hot Lines Walkthrough: A Quick How-To for Completing All 60 Levels

Hot Lines is a new Android and iOS puzzle game from Maryan Ortynskyi that proudly proclaims in the description that there are no menus, no achievements, just 60 levels worth of puzzles for you to solve. That’s pretty much as stripped-down as you could get for a mobile puzzle game, and as the description further explains, your objective is to destroy different objects on the board, may they be lines, circles, or squares. There are some levels that may be repeated through the course of the game, albeit with new elements — all in all, this game is all about “training” your visual memory, and as usual, testing how good you are in thinking out of the box.

Like in any puzzle game for mobile devices, things start off relatively easy before they get progressively harder, with each puzzle more challenging than the last. And while we are not in any way suggesting that you should read this guide from start to finish, as that’s only going to kill the challenge, this Hot Lines walkthrough should be the only resource you require if you need some help making it from level 1 all the way to level 60. Read on, and we’ll point you to the best our capabilities to the game’s one and only main goal — finishing all the levels!

Level 1-7: Things Start Off Easy

As we mentioned in the game overview, there’s really nothing much to the first few levels of Hot Lines. Your objective is to remove all the lines from the screen, with the limitation being that you cannot move the lines that have another line on top of them. You won’t have a very hard time doing this from stages 1 to 7, but as you move on to the next stages, you will see some new mechanics introduced, such as the ones we will be explaining to you below.

Level 8: The First New Mechanics

The first of the new mechanics you will notice in stage 8 is the diamond you’ll notice at the end of one of the lines; normally, you’ll still see squares at the end of lines, and while you’ll also see a line with a circle on the end, you don’t need to pay attention to that line for the meantime. The diamond signifies a broken line, and that means you’ll have to clear the lines on top of it in the right order, then tap on the diamond to move the broken part of the line into its proper place, allowing you to clear it.

That’s not the only new mechanic you’ll encounter in level 8, as there’s also a block that has a groove that allows the line to stick out of it; you’ll see this in the bottom right of the level screen. What does this mean, and how does this pose a challenge to you? Simply put, this means you won’t be able to clear the line sticking out until you remove any lines that may be resting in the groove. That means you’ll need to clear the line along the bottom in level 8 before you move on to the line with the grooved block.

Level 10: How Does The Circle-Tipped Line Work?

You will get to encounter the circle-tipped line once again in level 10, and that’s where you’ll need to take it into account when trying to clear the game’s titular Hot Lines. You will only be able to clear a line in this case if the line it’s crossing also has the same shape at the end. With that in mind, tap on the square at the bottom (that solitary square right below the criss-crossing lines), and that’s going to turn the circle into a square.

Level 12-17: More Shape Swapping

You’ll notice something strange once you reach level 12, as some of the broken lines will appear to have circles, and not diamonds, in the middle. That’s one shape swap you’ll want to ignore, as it’s just there to throw you off as a mere cosmetic change. But once you reach stage 16, that’s where shape swapping will play a part in the gameplay. The circle and square at the bottom of the screen are used for swapping the shapes at the tips of lines so that they match the shapes tipping the lines they intersect.

Interestingly, those two shapes will play a completely different role in level 17, as they will be used to clear lines with matching shapes — tapping on a circle, for instance, will clear a line with a circle at the tip, while tapping on a square will clear a square-tipped line.

Level 19-20: More Cosmetic Changes

This unusual shape will make its first appearance in level 19, and while it may look like a peculiar four-sided shape with rounded corners, it doesn’t do anything special. Likewise, diagonal lines also make their first appearance at this part of the game, but they work the same way as the standard horizontal or vertical lines. It’s all cosmetic in this case — they’re slanted lines that can be cleared in the exact same way.

At level 20, you’ll see another new object, and this time it’s going to be a square with lines that sprout from two edges. This is another cosmetic change, albeit with a slight twist – you can remove it, provided that the lines you see come out on top.

Level 25-43: Many Levels, Few Unusual Situations

Though the game will indeed be getting harder with each progressive level, stages 25 to 43 don’t have too many new mechanics introduced. But there are a few worth noting, starting with the line overlapping with another for the most part. You will encounter this in level 25, and find the line on top of the huge tangle of lines, with a rounded square tipping it off. Although it may appear to be a shape mismatch, you can still eliminate it the normal way. Strangely enough, it crosses a line that has a circle on the end.

Once you reach level 31, you’ll be asked to remove the vertical rectangles that resemble a chubbier version of the equals sign before you can remove the bottom line. There’s nothing much to that mechanic, but at level 40, you will have your first encounter with the circle that needs to be rotated so that you can connect the line sticking out of it to the rest of the line. Lastly, at level 43, a rotatable square will come into play — it has lines sticking out of two edges, but works in a similar way to the circle.

The Final Levels

Now that we’re at the home stretch, we must warn you that the final 11 levels or so have a rather high number of new mechanics that may throw you off. Read on, and we’ll talk you through what you need to do to work around them.

First off, level 50 will mark the first time you’ll see a set of three lines that can be rotated together as one. You can work these by using the rotatable rectangle sticking out of the top line. At level 52, the rotatable square will get a third stub of a line sticking out of its edges, and you’ll need to tap this until one of the lines is attached to another.

At stage 56, you’ll see a block with three lines sticking out of it. Instead of tapping on the block, you’ll have to tap on an icon to rotate it — other than that, it’s just as rotatable as the circle, square and the other rotatable figures you’ve seen so far. You’ll see two of those blocks instead of one in level 57, with both blocks rotating at the same time. All you need to do here is to tap the block connecting to the uppermost line, then repeat the process with the next line.

For the 60th and final stage, you will see three buttons near the bottom of your screen. The right button rotates the two blocks on the right side, the left button rotates the blocks on the left side, and the center button is used to get rid of all of the lines at the same time once you’ve used the left and right button to make the necessary moves. Hit that center button once everything is in order and that’s it — you’ve just completed Hot Lines!